Category: About

In the public sphere, as on Facebook, my primary interest is “propaganda” in the non-pejorative sense of publicly propagating my ideology. My ideology is descriptive and prescriptive. It consists of accepting the well-confirmed finding of the natural sciences, a realistic conception of ordinary experiences, and economic and political prescriptions.

I am also critical of what others say. I reject supernaturalism and pseudo-science. I welcome civil rational public discussions. I am not interested in private discussions which cannot be made public.

Unlike the famous Cartesian phrase: “I think therefore I am,” I am more interested in the implications of: “I eat therefore I continue to live.” Eating is a necessary — though not a sufficient — condition for living. In economics, I am interested in satisfying these conditions. And, because there are other human beings who are bent on thwarting my efforts at survival, I am interested in a political organization as a way to safeguard these interests.

My economics starts with giving to each person free subsistence land.

My politics is based on a small community (such as a village), democratically electing a council to conduct its affairs, and federating with other such communities. By this token, I reject a State with officers elected by thousands or millions of people.

First, everything which I write here, please consider as a draft which may be modified or retracted.

Second, when I look back at things which I have written, they are mostly criticisms — rejections of this or that.

Third, what I have to say about metaphysics and epistemology, I have said in my Ph.D. dissertation, Critique of Wilfrid Sellars’ Materialism, 1990. I characterize myself as an Emergent Materialist, and I agree with Sellars that “in the dimension of describing and explaining the world, science is the measure of all things, of what is, that it is, and of what is not that it is not.” In light of the existence of artifacts (things created by humans), the Sellarsian claim has to be qualified. When Sellars uses the term “world” he must be talking about — to use his term — the “physical-2” world (this is the physical world before the emergence of life, i.e. the inanimate world). If he includes the “physical-1 world,” then the term “science” must be expanded to cover intentional phenomena (function, teleology). And “explanation” must be expanded to cover not only causal explanations but explanations by reasons.

Fourth, I believe that Curt Ducasse was correct in viewing philosophy as dealing with appraisals — both positive and negative. To call something bullshit is to express a very strong negative appraisal.